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Kansas University Weekly.
vels of cookery, which her help-mate dutifully places in the sun to bake. I hear the call to dinner, and behold the twain seated before a feast which, touched by the magic of childhood's fancy, straightway becomes—"jelly of stars, and humming-bird's tongues." A delicious cobble-stone pudding is upset and I hear the lamentations which follow, and am a witness to the consolatory kiss which mends all mischief and coaxes back the housewife's smile. O childhood's Arcadie! In which the Ideal is evermore the Real.
A sound of subdued sobbing proceeds from the interior of a pink, ruffled sun-bonnet.
"Now don't get weepy, Gretel! It isn't long till Christmas; and Father Martinus will let me write to you in my letters home."
It was the day he left us for the convent school, the bright eager lad, impatient even at the delay of parting. Her bonnet fallen back from her tearful face, she clasps his arm. "You'll not forget me, Army, in the great school, with all the boys, and the brothers, and the lessons. Oh, I know you will."—A fresh storm of sobs—"Of course I won't, Goosie, I'm coming back some time to marry you. Father told Uncle Henry so today." With a hasty kiss upon the smooth parting of her yellow hair, and another in the region of her emotion-reddened nose, he leaves the tearful maiden desolate beside the elder bush which in the old days of make-believe had been their family residence.
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The elder bush has bloomed a score of times since the blond-haired children made mud pies in the roadside at my foot. The silence is athrob with the voiceless eloquence of the summer night.
A woman in whose uplifted eyes there burns a light as holy as that before the great altar in the church is kneeling with hands clasped upon the worn stone at my base. Her soft yellow hair is drawn back from a face of which a Madonna-painter might well dream.
bush stands a man, about whose face droop the sad folds of a monk's cowl. Despite the close-shut lips, the face speaks at once of love, and something more and higher than love. She stands with clasped hands before him.
"Gretel”! We both start, I with apprehension; she with impulsive joy. Beside the elder
"Gretel, I have thought that purity of purpose could sanctify unlawful acts. I have dreamed that I might live near to you, and yet serve the church. But I am self-arraigned. I am overtaken as with a flood of mighty waters—Your clear-eyed soul must aid my passion-blinded vision. Am I to go forth your lover, with your kiss upon my lips and the curse of the church upon my head; or do I leave you as Brother Andreas, the servant of God; henceforth to know naught of love nor the tenderness of woman's eyes?"
The two stand face to face; his hands lie heavily upon her shoulders.
"Army, you set my love a fearful task. God knows I would rather see you dead than false to the duty you saw so clearly before your soul was vexed with love of me. The best of love is this that it can make renunciation easy for the Ideal's sake. I see my path, and God's hand will lead me beside still waters."
The face she raised to his seemed glorified by a radiance from within.
"Madonna" he murmured, and with a long look into her unfaltering eyes, he turned and left her.
Today he lies at rest before the great altar in the church.—
Who knows but that yonder—— ? ”
The stroke of a deep voiced bell announced the starting of the funeral train. John Underwood awoke. The cross with its mossy arms, and the knee-worn stone at its base stood gray and mystical beside him.
HELEN G. METCALF.
A Plain Question.
Kind friend, if Satan had his due
Would I be here to pen
This trifling jingle? or would you
Be here to read it then?